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WHETHER it was exhaustion or her own stupidity, Bex's first day of chores didn't go so well.
She had woken up that morning with a splitting headache and bags under her eyes so heavy that they felt like weights. A stamping tool sat on her bedside table, and once pressed to the underside of her arm, her schedule was revealed. She was working in the hospital all day. After pulling on the same grey jumpsuit as the day prior, she headed down to the cafeteria.
Besides the frown the woman gave her while handing Bex a tray of bland oatmeal, it didn't seem like anyone knew about her heist last night. No one looked in her direction, not even the people that once marveled at her Victor status. President Coin must've enforced this. Bex scanned the room while eating her oatmeal, recognizing the familiar despair on everyone's faces. She wondered if anyone else saw Snow's broadcast last night, if they understood the implications it held. Having Katniss as the face of their revolution just became more important than ever.
Bex looked down at her hand, where the red marks were still healing. All revolutions came with the cost of pent-up trauma.
After breakfast, she headed down to the hospital wing. It felt weird to be walking through these halls looking like everyone else and not in a patient gown that showed almost all of her backside. When she arrived, she was greeted by the head doctor and assigned to a nurse. Her name badge called her, Zoë, and she walked with Bex through the crowded hallways as teenaged caretakers scuttled around them. "You won't be doing anything major for the next couple of weeks here," she explained. "You have no medical background, right?"
"Besides wrapping a torn piece of clothing around a wound and hoping it heals, no," Bex joked, but Zoë didn't find it funny at all. She continued with the tour and Bex decided it was best not to joke about her experience in the Games again. Did no one understand that sometimes the only way to cope with trauma was to make fun of it?
Bex was entrusted with simple tasks, like giving assigned medication to patients or helping with bandaging. She couldn't even do that well. It took her almost thirty minutes to put a splint on an injured soldier because she couldn't find the supply of them in the backroom. It was also a little difficult to put on when she was currently wearing a splint, constricting all movement on her right wrist and hand. She also managed to walk in on a doctor conducting surgery – twice. Lest we forget that she mistakenly switched two patients' medication. Lucky for her, they were pretty similar prescriptions and the patients were unharmed. That didn't make her feel any less guilty.
